Mark Swed

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg married a same-sex couple in May, she proudly proclaimed that she did so "by the powers vested in me by the Constitution of the United States." A month later, when the court acknowledged that same-sex marriage was indeed a constitutional right, Justice Antonin Scalia angrily dissented. A constitutional literalist, he called the 5-4 decision "a judicial putsch" that "threatened American democracy." After this historic head-to-head, the two justices headed off to a Washington party, where Scalia, a frustrated opera singer, reportedly belted with great gusto Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are...

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When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg married a same-sex couple in May, she proudly proclaimed that she did so "by the powers vested in me by the Constitution of the United States." A month later, when the court acknowledged that...

"Whatever really great poetry I wrote," Allen Ginsberg once said, "I was actually able to chant, to use my whole body, whereas in lesser poetry, I wasn't. I was talking."
Ginsberg would not have been the same world-changing poet...

Handel wrote two Easter oratorios. One is the "Messiah," taken over by Christmas, the extravagant "Hallelujah" chorus so well suited to the season. The other is in every conceivable way not the "Messiah" and all but ignored...

Bach and Handel did not lead intersecting lives. Bach never left central Germany, while Handel became a cosmopolitan Londoner. Bach was a man of the church and had 20 children. Handel caught the theater bug and was not a family man (recent musicology...